100 Things Penn State Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die (100 Things...Fans Should Know) - Softcover

Prato, Lou; Taliaferro, Adam

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1629371440 ISBN 13: 9781629371443

Publisher: Triumph Books, 2015

Synopsis

Perfect for Penn State fans who think they already know everything With traditions, records, and Nittany Lions lore, this lively, detailed book explores the personalities, events, and facts every Penn State fan should know. It contains crucial information such as important dates, player nicknames, memorable moments, and outstanding achievements by singular players. From trivia on legendary players - such as John Cappelletti, Kerry Collins, Larry Johnson, LaVar Arrington, and Paul Posluszny - to knowing the best places to catch a game, 100 Things Penn State Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die is the ultimate resource guide for true fans of the Nittany Lions.

About this title

About the Author

Lou Pratois a veteran journalist who covers Penn State sports for various magazines, including two publications dedicated to Penn State football,Blue White IllustratedandFight On Statemagazine. He is the author or coauthor of several other books about Penn State football, includingGame Changers: Penn State,The Penn State Football Encyclopedia, andWhat It Means to Be a Nittany Lion. He was hired by Penn State to help organize and start the Penn State All-Sports Museum and became the museum's first director. He lives in Centennial Hills, Pennsylvania.Adam Taliaferro was a top recruit at Penn State, where he earned playing time as a true freshman in 2000. Early in his college career as a cornerback, Taliaferro suffered a career-ending spinal cord injury while making a tackle in a game. Amazingly, Taliaferro, who was paralyzed on the hit, learned to walk again after eight months of rehab. Today, Taliaferro is a member of the New Jersey General Assembly and lives in Woolwich Township, New Jersey.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

100 Things Penn State Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die

By Lou Prato

Triumph Books

Copyright © 2015 Lou Prato
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-62937-144-3

CHAPTER 1

Cheer "We Are — Penn State!"

A grey-haired American tourist wearing an old leather air force flying jacket and a blue baseball cap with the words "Nittany Lions" in white on the front stood on a wooden platform on a mountain above the town of Zermatt, Switzerland, and gazed across the chasm at the world-famous Matterhorn. At first, he didn't notice the young couple in their twenties walking out of the gift shop.

The woman was wearing a white hoodie with the words "Penn State" on the front. Just as the couple passed, the old man turned, spotted the young lady's hoodie, and smiled.

"We Are —," the old man shouted. Several other tourists looked at the man and probably wondered what he was yelling about.

The young couple turned toward the old man and immediately saw his blue cap. Almost in unison they yelled back, "Penn State!"

The terse tableau must have seemed strange to the dozens of international tourists, including fellow Americans, who had witnessed the perplexing verbal exchange between the old man and the young couple. They had never seen each other before, but they had a common bond instantly in four words. That's what frequently happens whenever Penn State fans encounter each other, no matter the location or the circumstances. It could be a crowded restaurant in Los Angeles or a ferry boat in Hong Kong. Or maybe on the streets of New York City or at a campground near Yellowstone Park.

"We Are — Penn State!"

It is one of the most famous and familiar sports cheers in college football, instantly identifying the people who yell it as dedicated Penn State fans.

Although there are other college cheers that rival Penn State's in familiarity — such as Alabama's "Roll Tide!" and Texas' "Hook 'em Horns" — none involve the participants in such a unique way because at least two people must be involved. One person or more yell the first part, "We Are —," and a second soulmate or more responds with "Penn State!" It can be uttered just once or several times in succession. And when concluding a quick series of the cheer, a tagline is also added, with the people who started it all off shouting, "Thank you," and the respondents yelling back, "You're welcome!"

As one might expect, the cheer has spawned many copycats. Marshall University fans believe the cheer was invented at their school. That myth stems from a 2006 popular inspirational movie, We Are Marshall, depicting the true story of a 1970 charter plane crash that killed 75 people, virtually wiping out Marshall's football team and devastating the college town of Huntingdon. However, an article in the Huntingdon News in January 2007 pointed out the Marshall version was heard for the first time in 1988, several years after the creation of Penn State's cheer.

Actually, the Penn State cheerleaders who crafted the cheer in the mid-1970s did borrow from the cheers of three other colleges — Ohio State, Southern Cal, and Kentucky — to create their own unique one. It started in 1975.

"The only cheer everyone in the stadium knew was 'N-I ... Double-T ... A-N ... Y ... Roar, Lions, Roar,' because the Blue Band would do it before the game with their hats to get the crowd going," remembered former cheerleader Bob Krimmel, then the group's advisor. The cheerleaders wanted to devise a new cheer to revitalize the crowd.

They found parts of what they were seeking in Penn State's third game of the season at Ohio State and a couple weeks later while watching a televised game from USC. They took the traditional "O-H-I-O" that rolls back and forth around Ohio Stadium and the "We Are SC! We Are SC!" shouted rapidly without pause by USC, and turned it into a cheer where everyone yells the same words: "We Are Penn State," but without the deliberate pause.

The cheerleaders tried out the new cheer in the student section at Beaver Stadium, then in the north end zone seating area, during the first three home games that opened the 1976 season. "It went nowhere," said Krimmel.

When Penn State played its first away game, at night against Kentucky in Lexington, they found the golden key. "There was this unbelievable roar back and forth across the stadium, with one half yelling 'Blue' and the other half screaming, 'White,'" said Krimmel. "We knew that would work for us."

Still, it took more than five years to fully succeed, first with the students — who had been moved near the south end zone in a major Beaver Stadium expansion before the 1978 season — and then with the rest of the fans. I vividly remember shouting the cheer as a spectator at the 1979 Sugar Bowl in the New Orleans Superdome, but it still had not caught on with the Penn State football nation.

A September 1981 game at Nebraska regenerated the cheerleaders when they heard the home fans yelling in unison, "Go ... Big Red" throughout the game. They intensified their teaching process, and by the end of that year, the Penn State crowd was cheering it without prompting from the cheerleaders. Somewhere along the way, the "Thank you" and "You're welcome" were added.

The cheer is now immortalized with a 12-foot sculpture installed the summer of 2014 on a prominent and busy corner at University Drive and Curtin Road close to Beaver Stadium, Pegula Arena, and the Bryce Jordan Center. The words "We Are" in large shining steel letters stand permanently on a concrete foundation for all to see, a gift by Penn State's Senior Class of 2013.

So, there you have it — the birth of the illustrious four words that all Penn State fans must cheer and opponents hate to hear.

"We Are — Penn State!"

The Suhey-Triplett Myth

In recent years, Penn State's famed cheer has been credited to Steve Suhey, an All-American guard on the 1946 and 1947 football teams. At a team meeting late in the 1946 season, the players voted unanimously not to play a scheduled game at segregated Miami when told they had to leave their two black teammates at home. With the two black players still on the team a year later, Penn State was invited to play in the Cotton Bowl in segregated Dallas. Wally Triplett, recognized as Penn State's first African American varsity player, was a standout wingback on those teams.

According to one variation of the story that Triplett began relating a few years ago, a player or two asked aloud sometime after the 1946 Miami team meeting if they would have to vote again if another such racial instance occurred. Another version has players wondering about another meeting before the Cotton Bowl invitation was accepted in 1947. Either way, Triplett says Suhey, the co-captain of the 1947 team, strongly asserted publicly to several players there would be no meetings because, he said, "We're Penn State."

Suhey probably used those words. He was a passionate leader and one of the players behind the team's decision not to play Miami. Penn State fans can accept the mythology the next time they holler the cheer, but be sure to remember those diligent cheerleaders who created it.

CHAPTER 2

The Grand Experiment

Even before he became Penn State's head coach in 1966, Joe Paterno began thinking about the kind of football team he wanted. Paterno believed he could build an outstanding football team composed of superior athletes who also were superior students. He wanted to recruit the sons of ordinary farmers, mill hands, and other working-class families who were smart, diligent, and persevering and who could not only win football games, but would go on to be major contributors to society.

Paterno had nothing but disdain for the "dumb jock" syndrome, a conviction held by much of the public — especially those in academics — that most athletes would not be in college if not for their physical abilities and skills. Even many coaches and administrators steered players toward degrees in physical education rather than the more demanding engineering, premedical, and business curriculums.

Penn State had its share of borderline students in past decades, but in the early 1950s, the university implemented new entrance rules for scholarship athletes to conform to NCAA standards. The thrust of the rules was that athletes would be admitted to Penn State under the same qualifications as non-athletes. Furthermore, the student-athlete "must maintain normal progress with his class and maintain a term cumulative scholastic average which would keep him off probation." In conjunction with the new rules, assistant coaches were assigned to monitor the classroom work of the athletes and provide tutoring when needed.

By the latter years of the Rip Engle tenure, Penn State was recruiting better students who were also good athletes. Tackle Joe Bellas, an accounting major with a 3.5 GPA, and linebacker John Runnels, a pre-law major with a near-perfect 4.0 GPA, not only made All-East but became Penn State's first two first-team Academic All-Americans. They also were among the first student-athletes in the nation to receive $7,500 NCAA postgraduate scholarships

In the fall of his second season, Paterno started to talk openly about his philosophy. He wanted the kids to have a full college life, to socialize and to live among the students. There would be no false promises, no cheating, no special privileges, and no bending of the rules. And if they didn't study and go to class, they were out.

Sportswriters started hearing Paterno expound on his credo at the small, informal Friday night media receptions before home games. In October 1967, Paterno's seemingly radical idea appeared in public for the first time in a Philadelphia Daily News article by beat writer Bill Conlin. Conlin gave Paterno's idea an official name by capitalizing the two words Paterno had used to define it.

"I'm thinking in terms of a Grand Experiment," Conlin quoted Paterno. "It sounds a little corny, I know, but it's that kind of thing for us because we intend doing it with people who belong at Penn State. Everybody assumes if you have a great football team there have to be sacrifices in the area of [academic] standards. People tell me it can't be done without sacrificing standards. They tell me I'm daydreaming...."

Conlin wrote that Paterno wanted to prove Penn State could "play good football in the best league possible, with people who belong in college, and who kept things in perspective. Look, I want these kids to enjoy football. But I also want them to enjoy college. I want them to learn art and literature and music and all the other things college has to offer."

There was another facet to the Grand Experiment that Paterno told Ridge Riley, creator of the popular football newsletter for alumni. "What's needed is about 40 good football players, 15 excellent ones, and four or five great ones," Paterno said. "They must all have pride and enthusiasm. Among the superstars, there should be a breakaway runner, a great kicker, a versatile quarterback and so on. ... Sure, there are only a dozen or so schools in the country which will come up with these standards year after year. Penn State can do it if everyone gets behind us. Eventually we should have this kind of team."

When word of Paterno's Grand Experiment started making the rounds of the coaches' fraternity, most of them thought he was crazy or a hypocrite. Many predicted Paterno would be a flop both on the field and off it. They were all wrong.

Since Bellas and Runnells through 2014, 29 other Nittany Lions have earned first-team Academic All-American honors and 13 of them were selected first-, second-, or third-team All-Americans on the field. Seventeen scholar-athletes, including five who were first-team All-Americans on the field, have received $18,000 postgraduate fellowships from the College Football Hall of Fame. Eighteen players have received $7,500 postgraduate scholarships from the NCAA, and four players earned $5,000 postgraduate scholarships from the National Association of Collegiate Athletic Directors.

The graduation rates of Paterno's players have been among the best in the nation. Since the NCAA began releasing annual graduation rates in 1990, Penn State football players have averaged more than 80 percent and as high as 93 percent. Those figures are consistently among the top in the Football Bowl Subdivision and higher than the average of the Penn State student body.

Equally significant, the players of the Grand Experiment are now successful doctors, lawyers, business owners, educators, financial consultants, stockbrokers, authors — you name it — first-class citizens who are major contributors to society.

Perhaps the Grand Experiment can be summed up by attorney Harry Hamilton, a third-team All-American defensive back and a two-time Academic All-American in 1982 and 1983 who also won a $7,500 NCAA postgraduate scholarship.

"Joe always told us his all-time team is going to be the players that played for him that contributed the most to society," said Hamilton.

That's the ultimate result of the Grand Experiment and it is Joe Paterno's lasting legacy.

From Onkotz and Pittman to Urschel

All-Americans Dennis Onkotz and Charlie Pittman were the first to prove the Grand Experiment worked. They were in Paterno's first recruiting class and became Academic All-Americans in 1969 as well as first team All-Americans on the field.

Onkotz was a consensus All-American linebacker in 1968 and 1969 while studying biophysics. He made national news when it became known he went to class on Saturday mornings before the afternoon games because that was so rare for college football players.

"We were the symbols of what Joe was pushing, the scholar-athlete," Onkotz wrote in the book What It Means to Be a Nittany Lion. "We went to class, we graduated, we did all those things you're supposed to do."

The teams Onkotz and Pittman played on were undefeated in 1968 and 1969, and from the fourth game of the 1967 season, they never lost a game.

Pittman was the rushing leader all three seasons, but the records he set have all been surpassed by the likes of Hall of Famers Lydell Mitchell and Curt Warner. Pittman was a business major, and encouraged by Paterno, he later earned an MBA. Tony Pittman followed his dad to Penn State and was a defensive starter on another undefeated team in 1994. He not only was an Academic All-American like his father but also received an $18,000 fellowship as a Hall of Fame scholar-athlete.

Decades later in the 2000s, the Grand Experiment was still working with first-team All-Americans linebacker Paul Posluszny and offensive guard Stefen Wisniewski, who also were Hall of Fame scholar athletes, as well as math genius and third-team All-American guard John Urschel.

Onkotz has spent most of his life as a financial consultant and Pittman is vice president of a major media company.

"I am who I am today because of Joe Paterno's Grand Experiment and Penn State," Pittman said. Onkotz and many others would certainly agree.

CHAPTER 3

The Football Culture

The only reason this chapter is not ranked No. 1 in this book is because it is incomplete. I believe everyone needs to know about the claims made during the summer of 2012 that a corrupt football culture at Penn State allowed a respected assistant coach to roam freely for years without exposing him as an alleged pedophile. He has been convicted and is now in prison. This is not about the case itself or — with one significant exception — about the controversy that continues in many judicial and public venues.

That exception is the assertion in an internal investigative report by former FBI Director Louie Freeh that an immoral, self-serving destructive "culture of football" at Penn State was at the root of the entire matter. Freeh's report commissioned by the school's board of trustees for $6.5 million is still being debated inside and outside the courtroom. The alleged facts and conclusions by Freeh and his investigators and the flaws and dubious assumptions condemned by their critics are too detailed to get into here.

I have examined the Freeh Report in depth and found multiple flaws, instances of hearsay, and outright untruths, none more prominent than the ludicrous insistence that Penn State's academics were perverted by the "culture of football."

(Continues...)

Excerpted from 100 Things Penn State Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die by Lou Prato. Copyright © 2015 Lou Prato. Excerpted by permission of Triumph Books.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Triumph Books
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1629371440
• ISBN 13: 9781629371443
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368